Slow going Sencha

Look at it. The poor thing, its had that one side finished since Sunday night and has been hanging sadly on the wardrobe door since then. I just haven't bothered to work on it. Maybe later? I don't know, I had hoped to have finished the 2 Beignets and 2 Senchas by the end of February! Ha! Ah well, I'll do it when I fancy it I suppose :)
Jellybean x

I got an Award!

I won a Stylish Blogger award! I was awarded this by the lovely Lucy of Tricky Seams (which by the way, I love the name of! I'm terrible at naming things). I'm so excited!! :D Thank you so much Lucy!!!

I'm so excited, like a child on Christmas day kind of excited! So according to the rules, I have to tell you seven things about myself that you don't know!

1. I have a polaroid camera, and 2 other film cameras. I love shooting film. Some people hate waiting to finish a film so they can have it developed, but for me this is part of the fun! The not knowing if your pictures will even come out is exciting! My latest camera is the Pentax P3 from the 80s, an early birthday present from Dom. Now I'm learning all about aperture and shutter speed and all sorts of interesting things! My other film camera is a Diana Mini, which really is quite mini!
2. In secondary school I was put in isolation for having pink hair. Yep, that's right, pink hair of all things. The first and last black mark on my school record *sigh* I had to dye it out before I was allowed back to school. How ridiculous. The worst thing was the school ran a monthly magazine, and in the next edition there was a picture on the front cover of a group of students. Smack bang in the middle was a girl with red streaks in her hair! As you can imagine I was most displeased.
3. I have a record player. Well, actually its Doms too, as we bought it together. I have a few favourite records, including Buddy Holly and Elvis Presley. I love listening to records :)
4. I like to solder. As in, with a soldering iron. I don't know much about electronics though, so I like the kits from places like Maplin. These kits have all the pieces and instructions that you need to make something cool! I've made this one before :)
5. I have no rhythm. I can't dance to save my life. At all. We have Dance Central on the Kinect, but I find it really difficult to keep in time with it.
6. I am very clumsy.Very very. So much so that Dom calls me 'whoops'. Yesterday I managed to knock the hot iron off the counter. Luckily it missed me and landed on it side so the floor wasn't scorched or anything and it isn't broken.
7. I like to act. I just haven't for a long time. I took A-level drama, and for my exam piece, I played Eliza from Pygmalion (or My fair lady if you've seen the film). I was in a group of four with people that I liked so I enjoyed it alot. The day before we were to perform for the examiner, we had a dress rehearsal for the rest of the class. We were shouted off the stage by our drama teacher telling us to get off the stage and go and do some work! (we had messed up our lines which put us off track). This was terrible as we all loved our teacher and didn't want to disapoint her :( For the next 24 hours we worked like crazy. I got an A for my performance in the end. Our teacher was so proud :)

And I get to pass the award to 7 other people :) This was so difficult, I've tried to choose people who haven't received this award before, so they can be excited too :)
Jenny from Chronically Uncool
JuliaB from House of Marmalade
Shannon from Hungry Zombie Couture
Oblibby from Oodles of Obliciousness
Debi from My Happy Sewing Place
Lady Cherry from Lady Cherry Loves
Karen from Did you make that?

Done! :) That was fun, thanks again Lucy! :D
Jellybean x

Beignet Skirt - Finished!!

Now, I had wanted to take some lovely pictures of me in the skirt around Lincoln inspired by the always lovely photo's Debi takes of her finished projects. However, it turned out my photographer/fiance Dom was actually at work! He'd remembered wrong, its next Saturday that he's off work. I suppose it's for the best because when I opened the curtains, this is what I saw:

Not exactly ideal picture taking conditions. So when Dom left for work, I eventually got the tripod up, and worked out how to attach the camera to it. Then I spent the next half an hour working out how to set it to self timer and making it focus in the right place as the auto focus isn't on and I've still not got round to asking Dom to turn it back on! Then I got dressed up nice :)

Yay, I'm so pleased with it, I like it alot :) I love the belt too, its so cute! I used Tilly's tutorial. Also, it's my face! I finally had the courage to show my face! Trying to choose pictures was really hard, there were many more that were just awful. I can still find something wrong with myself in every single one of these pictures, but in the end I just had to try and stop criticising myself and get a grip! Lol. I'm hoping choosing pictures of myself and the clothes I make will get easier as I go along. I'm going to try hard to stop criticising how I look and just be happy with myself. 

Anyway, enough rambling! What do you think? :) Also, I'd love to know which is your favourite picture!

Jellybean x

ps. the necklace is the one I showed you here!

Marital Rating scale

You might have already come across this, but I thought I'd share it with you anyway :)
This a Marital Rating Scale from 1939. There is a scale for the wives and a scale for the husbands. Here's the first page of both:

Click on the picture to make it bigger so you can read it. I also found the rest of the scale uploaded by a Flikr user here. When viewing each image, right click and choose 'original'. This makes it plenty big enough to read :) I've just done the husbands one, and came out with 79! Very Superiour! lol Of course, some things like the ones to do with cars and children, I had to imagine. This is ok, I know Dom well enough after nearly 6 years to know if he'd let me use the car if I needed it! There are some very funny ones, and some in the demerits column that I don't mind so much. Have a read through, its really interesting, really gives you a feel for what a marriage was meant to be like in 1939!
Also, my Beignet is 99% done!! :D The skirt itself is finished, but I want to make a belt using Tilly's Bow Belt tutorial. Then of course there are the belt loops to do. Hopefully I'll get that done today, and it can go in the wash tonight to get rid of chalk marks and stuff. I'm hoping to wear it tomorrow, so will take pictures for you then :)
Jellybean x

Beignet update

Finally got some more matching thread today. The shell and the lining are sewn together, I've stayed the waist with twill tape, I've understitched the seam allowances on the waist, turned it right side out and pressed the seams. The hem has been pressed and pinned up ready to be sewn in place. Then its onto the buttonholes!! 12 of them! Ah well, nearly there :)

Jellybean x

Bad sewing fairies!

The sewing fairies hate me today. I was happily sewing the lining and the shell together when the bobbin thread ran out! Then as I was filling the bobbin, I realised I had run out of thread :( With no other thread even half matching, I'll have to wait until tomorrow to pick some up. Or maybe even Tuesday as Mondays are super busy with lectures for me :(

On a happier note, I pre-washed my red silk crepe with success! I used Soak wash from The Little Knitting Company. I think they are selling off the stock they have and then won't get any more, as it would seem shipping liquids into the country is a no-no. I tried ordering from Amazon.com and it said it couldn't be delivered to my address. So once the Soak Wash runs out, if The Little Knitting Company doesn't have any more, I guess I'll have to use baby shampoo. I'm not sure if its because it's still wet, but washing it seems to have given it more of a sheen, which I'm happy about :)

If I can be bothered after tea, I'll iron and cut out the red cotton underlining (which I also pre-washed today) for my Sencha blouse. I might even do the black underlining too.

What do the bad sewing fairies do to you? Hide your scissors? Steal your new machine needles? Or something equally annoying?

Jellybean x

Beignet update

I finally had the time to cut out the fabric for my first Beignet on Wednesday afternoon. I've been working on it whenever I'm not too tired and have a spare hour or so. Here's my progress so far.

The outside. I just had to show off those pockets!

And the inside.

As you can see, they aren't attached yet. And its in desperate need of a press, since I last worked on it, it just been folded up in the box with my fabric. Its also a much nicer navy than the pictures show.
Also, here's a pic of my current brooches :)

The apple was from a vintage fair sometime last year, the poppy is from Dom, and the book I got this week from this Folksy shop :) It makes me giggle every time!
Also, I ordered the underlining for the Sencha blouses, it came last Wednesday. I'm still waiting on the black silk crepe from cheapfabrics.co.uk though.
Jellybean x
ps. I've added labels to this post! I'm going to go through the rest of my posts and do the same. Hopefully this will make it easier to find stuff :)

Sencha muslin #2

I've made a slight change to the sleeve on my left side. From the front view pic you can't really see the difference, but you can in real life (stupid pics), but you can tell more from the back in the pics. That vertical crease from my waist to my shoulder is gone! On the front the vertical crease is less pronounced now.
After consulting the lovely ladies at The Sewing Forum, and spending an hour and a half scouring google and Flikr for photo's of other people in their Sencha blouses, I'm much happier with the fit of mine, especially after changing that sleeve. It looks like creasing is unavoidable with cut on sleeves, and this blouse is meant to be a bit baggy. So I'm happy with it, and won't mess with it anymore.
What do you think? Does it look ok? Dom says it does, but I'd appreciate your opinion too :)
Jellybean x

Sencha muslin

This one isn't so perfect. What's with the crazy bunching under the arm and the general bagginess of that area?? Does anyone know what is causing this and how to fix it? I'd really appreciate some help :) The photo's don't how baggy it is, its pretty baggy. There's alot of excess fabric! Aside from that, I'm very happy with how it fits everywhere else. It even fits across the chest! :D
Thanks for any advice about the baggy bits :)
Jellybean x

Beignet muslin

Hurray, I got the Beignet muslin done! You'll have to excuse the scruffy t-shirt, and the fact that I thought it would be a good idea to fold down the seam allowance at the top of the skirt, only to find out when I looked at the pictures that I had folded it down waaaay too much, so all that beautiful shaping is lost. You'll just have to trust my judgement that it fits amazingly! I've done absolutely no alterations to this at all, its a straight size 12!! I must be average length in the waist to crotch, but short in the neck and waist, as the waist is right where it should be and so are the hips! :) Also, you can see I tried out the pockets. I've never done in-seam pockets before, so thought it a good idea to practice them.
I received my package from Cheapfabrics.co.uk today! I now have the lining for the Beignet skirts, and the red silk crepe. The black silk crepe was apparently out of stock, but they'll send it when they have it (how long do you think is a reasonable time to wait?). Now that I have actually seen the crepe properly I love it but have discovered that you can see my bra through it. Not a good look for me! lol. So I'm going to nip to the market tomorrow to pick up some cotton fabric to underline it with. I want cotton, no polyester! I want this as a summer top as well as a winter top, which is why I went for silk as it breathes, so to underline with polyester would defeat the object. I'm also planning on picking up thread and buttons. I have a collection of various buttons, but either they just aren't right, or there aren't enough of them.
Then its onto the pre-washing! I plan on chucking it all in together (minus the silk) with a few Colour Catchers.
I can't wait to try out the Sencha blouse too :)
Jellybean x
ps. the red thing on my wrist is a new wrist pin cussion that I made tonight :)